The Ballcap Blog

In 1992, Major League Baseball had two official on-field cap suppliers; New Era and Sports Specialties. I'm not sure who's idea it was or why, but the two cap companies decided to add the MLB "batter man" logo to their caps. The two colors on each side of the batter man would be the two main colors of each team. It appears at first the logo appeared on the side of the caps. I have never seen a New Era cap like this but I have seen several Sports Specialties caps. Also in the early days the logo was not embroidered straight on to the cap; it was a simply a patch glued onto the cap. A pre-first season Marlins cap with the logo on the side. Circa 1992 MLB logo "patch". Sports Specialties apparently experimented with single-color MLB logos. In 1994 after New Era became the exclusive cap supplier, on-field caps came with gold pins in the MLB logo's place to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Major League Baseball. For years the logo remained unchanged on the

As a Bay Area resident I feel the time is right to pay tribute to the San Francisco Giants and their 2010 playoff run by looking at and comparing their caps over the years. (By the way, neither of the Bay Area teams (Giants and A's) are my favorite teams). Giants caps have really not changed all that much since moving to San Francisco from New York in 1958. The 1958 pre-season saw two different prototypes; one that Willie Mays wore in a press conference, and then the design that was airbrushed onto player's caps on Topps baseball cards (see the "Holy Grails" blog). It's always been the same colors: black and orange. There has been slight variances, most notably the orange visors of the late 70s/early 80s and has an alternate this past regular season. Let's take a look... The Giants primary cap maker dating back to the New York days until 1976 was Tim McAuliffe, Inc. (KM Pro after 1969) and remained that way until KM went out of business in 1976. I have seen Ne